


The Places Between

by nocturnal08



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturnal08/pseuds/nocturnal08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson put together a fine crew, but it takes them a little while to mesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dizmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizmo/gifts).



Ward had never trained with someone this green. Skye was undisciplined, irreverent, and in many cases, she was just wrong. Telling her that didn’t seem to make an impact. She had no discipline. He wanted to say she was a liability, though when it counted she always seemed to come through. For how much longer, he didn’t like to think about. So he trained her, with single-minded determination she at times failed to appreciate. 

“You’re late! Again!” he snapped when Skye finally showed up for training.

“Okay, jeez,” Skye said, stepping back. “I get it, sleeping is a sign of weakness.”

“We already talked about this,” Ward reminded her. “You want to do more push-ups?”

“No,” Skye said, wrinkling her nose.

“This isn’t a game, Skye,” Ward warned. “Come to training on time. Work hard. Commit to this.”

“Yum, sanctimony for breakfast,” Skye snarked, glaring hard at her S.O. “I’m here, aren’t I? Wearing my leash and everything.”

“We’re doing conditioning,” Ward told her tightly. 

“Great, sounds like so much fun,” Skylar quipped, getting on the treadmill and warming up.

Ward got on a parallel treadmill and started to run, fast and quiet except for the rhythm of his stride and confident breathing. He nearly tripped off the track, when “Heat of the Moment” started blasting through the ship’s onboard stereo system. “The hell,” Ward cursed, regaining his stride and glaring at Skye, who really needed to work on her poker face.

“Wow, that is loud,” Simmons commented, wincing.

Fitz looked pained and covered his sensitive ears.

“Uh,” Skye said, “I… just a second.”

“Did you do this?” Ward asked, still running. His look was far from approving.

“Yeah, but it…”

“Turn. It. Off.” May’s voice from the cockpit cut through the music, clearly unamused.

Skye jumped, turning off her treadmill and using the console undo her hack. After a few seconds of frantically unwriting code, she looked up guiltily. “For the record, that was mostly a mistake.”

“Oh, you accidentally hacked into the S.H.I.E.L.D. flight system. You know, the thing that is keeping us in the air?” Simmons demanded from the lab. 

Fitz looked alarmed. “We are at an altitude of over 40,000 feet!” he protested.

“I didn’t touch navigation,” Skye said quickly, eyes on Ward, who was looking at her with fierce disapproval. 

Ward didn’t say anything to her for the rest of the morning, all because of the stupid prank. The weight of his silence was heavy on her chest as he made Coulson’s newest recruit run and sweat and gasp for air. Yeah, Skye didn’t like running and she didn’t care too much for Ward’s high and mighty routine either. When he did talk, it was only to insist on more torture, and then she was dismissed like they weren’t even friends anymore. 

“She broke into the ship’s system… again!” Ward exploded at Coulson. 

“It was kind of hard to miss,” Coulson said dryly. 

“The bracelet is supposed to act as a deterrent,” Ward reminded him. 

“A deterrent for serious breach of protocol and security,” Coulson replied. She hadn’t gone near the files he knew she was desperate to get a hold of. “It was a prank. She’s probably just bored” Coulson suggested. 

Ward squirmed inside, frustration and real fear warring with duty and discipline. He wasn’t sure yet how far he could push. Coulson was very touchy-feely for his taste and it made him nervous. Ward liked things done by-the-book, with precision. He liked to get things right. This whole “be a person” thing was pushing him out of his comfort zone. “I’m not boring!” he protested. 

Coulson hid his amusement. “Anything else?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Ward expectantly. 

“No, sir,” Ward said, suddenly feeling like a tattle-tale instead of a Supervising Officer and decorated shield agent. “I will continue to monitor her progress.” 

“As will I,” Coulson said, dismissing Agent Ward with a nod of his head. 

Skye left the training room with a serious chip on her shoulder and it didn’t help any seeing Ward go into Coulson’s office. Three guesses what they were going to talk about in there. Her fingers itched to do some serious hacking. It sucked not having access to her various online projects. She narrowed her eyes at the piece of electronic jewelry that was a symbol of how they didn’t trust her here, how she didn’t belong. 

She was physically exhausted from the training, but lonely. Ward was still talking with Coulson, so she went into the lab, only to have the two chattiest people on board fall silent when she entered. “What are you working on?” She asked glumly, with no real expectation that she would understand their answer. 

“Ummm…. this,” Jemma said, smiling briefly at her and bringing over a small hairclip that she slipped into Skye’s hair. 

“And you’ll need these,” Fitz added, handing her a pair of simple post earrings. 

“Am I going on a date?” Skye joked, putting in the earrings. 

Fitz laughed and Jemma rolled her eyes. Skye grinned as music filled her ears from the mp3 transmitter and receiver devices the FitzSimmons hive mind had put together for her. “Awesome!” She exclaimed. 

“You could also, you know, use a CD player,” Fitz commented. “Though not that 80s crap where we have to hear it.”

“And no illegal downloads,” Jemma admonished, showing Skye how to adjust volume and channel via the ersatz hairclip.


	2. May

Melinda May was not an idiot. She knew she was broken inside. And she knew what Coulson was up to trying to get her to cozy up to those _kids_ , with their puppy dog eyes and crappy self-preservation skills. At least Ward had enough issues of his own that she wasn’t worried about corrupting him. And he didn’t try to fix her. 

Skye, on the other hand, was just a headache wrapped in perky pink paper. May would have left her alone except the girl was distracted and that was going to get her killed. Or worse. May knew an awful lot about worse. 

And it didn’t help that Skye had started following along behind her like a baby chick. Maybe Phil liked to take in strays, but May didn’t do mother hen. It was just added pressure on what was already a delicate balance. Backed into a corner, she got mean. A berserker that could not be trusted with mommy issues and emotional backstories. 

So she stayed in the cockpit. Flew the plane. Watched over them like the Hawk. And batted away their attempts at intimacy. Emotional intimacy, anyway. She and Ward were sleeping together. She figured she might as well take advantage of that while she could and Ward was wound tight. He needed that release. Regular sex and apparently… board games… May thought with a ghost of smile. 

From the cockpit May could monitor the entire ship, each section was wired in. She’d done a hell of a lot of surveillance in her time and the habit was hard to break. To her, Ward was the sound of strained breath and movement, doing martial arts training. Coulson knew enough to block her out if he was taking a sensitive call, but right now he was just touching base with the Hub, voice deceptively calm and cheerful. May knew better, but really wasn’t one to talk. FitzSimmons were complete incomprehensible to her most of the time, but occasionally their chatter made her smile (and occasionally she turned off the feed to give them the privacy they needed). That left Skye, and she was sometimes harder to track down. The girl needed watching. 

“You just sit here listening to everyone, don’t you?” Skye asked, clearly finding the idea distasteful. “You know what’s a little creepy, right?” 

May made her gaze blank and dismissive. 

“Of course you do, that’s probably half the reason you do it,” Skye said, sitting back in the cockpit and glancing around. May knew she was watching and learning, quick mind never staying still for long (and quick mouth never shutting up). She didn’t encourage these little visits, but Skye hadn’t given up yet. 

May knew more about Skye’s backstory than Skye did at this point, so she knew what Skye was after, how much she wanted to uncover things that really should not see the light of day. There was a time when May had been dogged and scrappy like that, pushing the limits until they pushed back. It had earned her a name in the business and a reputation, too. One that she had put a real effort into leaving behind. 

“Ward has me doing jujitsu?” Skye said, like it was a question and like May wasn’t already aware. 

Even without a response, she forged ahead. “I don’t suck quite as bad as I used to? But I still really suck.” 

Again, like May wasn’t aware. 

“I’m getting really tired of being thrown on the ground though,” Skye continued. “But I guess there aren’t even mats in the field, right? So… probably hurts even more...”

 _I try not to get thrown on the ground,_ May thought, but didn’t give Skye the satisfaction of a conversation. In a test of wills, May always won. 

Skye let the silence build for a record-breaking five minutes before it broke her. “Good talk,” she commented, heading out the door. 

May listened to her steps down the hall. She heard where Skye paused, indecisive, then picked up her voice in the lab. She kept an ear open for the team and her eyes on the sky ahead. They were heading into some dark clouds. The rest of the team didn't know it yet, but the ride was going to get bumpy. 


	3. Jemma

Go away,” Skye snapped, hands wrapped around herself in her small bunk. 

Simmons made a little noise of surprise and distress that immediately made Skye feel even worse. 

“No, sorry. I thought you were Ward,” Skye quickly backtracked. 

“And that’s how you talk to your S.O.?” Simmons asked, with a slight arch in her tone as she slowly came in and sat down on the bunk next to Skye. Skye’s eyes were rimmed with tear-streaked mascara. 

Skye wrinkled her nose. “I’m really not good at the whole ‘chain-of-command’ thing,” she admitted, sniffing. 

“Color me shocked,” Jemma said dryly, taking out a tissue and folding it over before gently wiping the edges of Skye’s eyes. At first Skye jerked back, but then she held still for Jemma, touched by her ministrations. “You want to talk about it?” Simmons asked evenly. 

Skye was quiet for a moment, considering the offer. Jemma’s hands were cool and her touch was light. Skye wasn’t used to people touching her like that; more often it was just grabbing her arm or pushing her back or having hard, hungry sex. 

Here at SHIELD, Skye’s every instinct seemed wrong. She didn’t fit into the streamlined hegemony that was home to Agent Coulson and the others. Despite growing up around nuns, she had never learned to hold anything sacred. Not science, as Fitz and Simmons both did. Not heroism like Ward or being a badass like May. Though she appreciated those things. It was just that she couldn’t ever be the acolyte they seemed to want. She was raw and desperate and would do anything to uncover something, one little clue, about her family. 

“What are you thinking about?” Jemma asked, breaking in gently. She found Skye to be incredibly brave. Quite rash at times, yes, but indomitable. In truth, it was hard for Jemma to love someone so free. She knew that no matter how hard Skye argued about being committed to SHIELD, she was fighting inertia to stay with them. Entropy was a hard thing to resist and chaos certainly felt closer at hand when Skye was around. But despite Jemma’s natural affinity to all things constant and reliable, like Fitz for instance and SHIELD, she didn’t want to spend her life cooped up in a lab and spinning her theoretical wheels. _Applied_ sciences were what she had signed up for, after all. 

“I am thinking about my mother,” Skye confessed, looking boldly into Jemma’s eyes. “And whether I’m being a total idiot trying to track her down. May obviously thinks so.” Even as she said it, her mind raced down the paths of possibilities and imagined what it would be like to belong to someone. 

Jemma smiled in a comforting way, hand touching Skye’s. She had grown up with a wonderful, supportive family and, much as she loved them, part of her decision to work at SHIELD was to be independent. They stood on opposite ends of this divide.

“And Ward can be such a psycho!” Skye burst out, frustrated. “It’s like sometimes he’s all ‘You’re my friend, I’m gonna protect you no matter what’ and then he turns around and acts like a total jerk.” 

“He will protect you no matter what,” Jemma assured her. “That’s what families do.” 

Skye blinked back tears. No wonder she didn’t know what to do. If this was a family, then no wonder she was sucking so bad at being a SHIELD agent or consultant or whatever. “I really want a family,” Skye whispered. 

“I think everybody does,” Simmons replied with a calm voice, stroking the back of Skye’s hand with her thumb until Skye tensed and pulled her hand away. 

Skye wrapped her arms around her knees, hoping her jealousy wasn’t obvious. Simmons was brilliant, and she was gorgeous, and she obviously had a family that loved her and worried about her, not to mention the way Fitz couldn’t hide the way he felt and even the way Coulson and Ward _approved_ of her. And May would never have yelled at Jemma the way she shut down Skye. Skye forced the welling emotions away with a tight swallow. She never indulged in self-pity for long. 

“Families are… messier than we often like to admit,” Simmons continued. She reached out and took Skye’s hand again, pulling her gently so they sat side-by-side, static electricity making the hairs on their arms stand up, electrons passing between them. “And it’s hard,” Jemma admitted, “because we don’t get to choose what happens to us and we can’t ever go back and change it.” 

“Simmons,” Skye scoffed. “You really don’t believe in time travel?” she nudged her friend playfully. 

Jemma laughed and poked Skye’s arm, with the full knowledge that her touch would be the conduit to balance the charges and grinning at Skye’s small start and the spark of electricity. “Not within the realms of our current theoretical framework,” she responded primly. 

Skye was one of those girls who didn’t really get on with other girls, usually, but she loved Jemma. Jemma made her feel warm and happy and powerful, in a way. She tried to mirror Jemma’s gentle way of touching by letting her head lean over and rest on Jemma’s shoulder, immediately feeling her smile in the small straightening of her body. Jemma turned toward Skye, hand going down and cupping her chin, gently bringing their gazes into line and smiling wide. Then Jemma leaned in and kissed Skye. 

They took one breath together and Skye blinked, feeling a little unsure. Jemma kissed her again and this time Skye let her body respond, let it move with it’s own frenetic grace. Jemma never stopped touching her. Her hand smoothly stroked downward over the bulge in Skye’s bicep and over her lean torso. Skye was jumpy, extra responsive, but the pressure of the kiss and the intertwining of their bodies distracted her. Jemma was focused on the kiss, letting her own desire ignite Skye’s. 

Skye panted, smiled briefly, and pulled off her t-shirt. She grinned wider at the dilating pleasure it brought to Jemma’s gaze. Skye reached out and with a gentle, but insistent hand that explored under Jemma’s blouse. Soon they were doing more exploring, gasping and writhing with undisguised pleasure. 

Release. And catharsis. They were both very good at that. They lay intertwined in the small cot. Skye was more relaxed than she had been since she left her van behind to join Coulson on this wild ride. 

All of her questions were still there. There were even a few new ones running through her mind. But she laid her head down on Jemma’s shoulder, curling herself up small, and didn’t ask them. She listened instead to the steady beat of Jemma’s heart and her soft sighs of breath as she slept, still gently holding Skye. There were quiet footsteps in the hall and the sigh of the ship at night. 

Skye tilted her head up and kissed Jemma tenderly, forcing herself to be gentle and not disturb her. Then she followed her friend’s example and relaxed, closing her eyes, falling asleep in a tangle of hair and warm breath.


End file.
